Category Archives: Op-eds

There is a corner of a foreign field that is forever… ELDR Council

By Mark Valladares | Thu 19th May 2011 - 9:53 am

Welcome to Dresden, the capital of Saxony, famous for being the last place mentioned by a Liberal minister at the dispatch box before the Coalition. Admittedly, on that occasion, he was announcing its carpet-bombing, but I’m optimistic that this visit will be rather less traumatic for all concerned…

So, why are a dozen or so Liberal Democrats gathering here? The Council of ELDR (the European Liberal Democrats) – think of it as the European equivalent of the Federal Executive – is holding its first meeting of its current two year term, hosted by the FDP, and a delegation of people for …

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Also posted in Europe / International | Tagged Annemie Neyts-Uyttebroeck, dresden, eldr, sachsen anhalt and saxony | Leave a comment

Julian Huppert MP writes on Trident: We don’t need to keep fighting the Cold War

By Julian Huppert | Wed 18th May 2011 - 3:53 pm

I have believed for a long time that we don’t want nuclear weapons, we can’t afford them, and they weaken our moral authority to persuade other people not to obtain them. I proposed the emergency motion on this which we passed last year.

So how do I feel after today’s statement on the Initial Gate for Trident replacement?

Disappointed – but also encouraged and heartened by what we have achieved. Nick Harvey, our Minister, has helped to secure a 25% reduction in the overall number of warheads, and cost reductions to ease the financial burden. But this is not enough to …

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Tagged nick harvey and trident | 19 Comments

Tom McNally writes: we must not let the best be the enemy of the good

By Lord Tom McNally | Wed 18th May 2011 - 9:12 am

To get the full flavour of the task facing the Government when contemplating Lords reform can I recommend going to the House of Lords website and calling up the Hansard for 17 May? There you will read an hour of exchanges when Lord Strathclyde (the Leader of the House) repeated the Government statement on House of Lords reform which Nick Clegg had made in the Commons. There was very little support around the House for the Coalition’s vision for reform.

I believe Nick Clegg has done the House of Lords the courtesy of treating the House of Lords like grown-ups. …

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Also posted in Parliament | Tagged constitutional reform, house of lords and lords reform | 11 Comments

Green government, reforming government: the liberal influence

By Nick Clegg MP | Tue 17th May 2011 - 8:31 pm

Here’s Nick Clegg’s latest email to party members:

I’m delighted to let you know about two developments in government today – reinforcing our commitment to being the greenest government ever and publishing our plans for an elected second chamber.

Our party has always been the greenest among the mainstream political parties. We put the commitment to put make Britain greener on the front cover of our manifesto. And I’m proud that we’re living up to that reputation in Government – even in these difficult economic times.

Chris Huhne and Vince Cable have today announced proposals for binding carbon targets in the run-up to …

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Tagged chris huhne, constitutional reform, environment, house of lords, lords reform and vince cable | 5 Comments

Interview: Willie Rennie – The Liberal Democrats are not easily led….

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 17th May 2011 - 6:49 pm

This was the scene in the Fife coastal village of North Queensferry today where, in the shadow of the Forth Bridges, Willie Rennie talked to the media after being confirmed as the new leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats. He replaces Tavish Scott, who resigned 10 days ago in the wake of devastating Scottish Parliament election results and was the only candidate when nominations closed at noon today.

The venue was symbolic. Five years ago, on the day of the Dunfermline by-election, the Courier, the …

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Also posted in News and Scotland | Tagged tavish scott and willie rennie | 7 Comments

Dinti Batstone writes… If not now, when?

By Dinti Batstone | Tue 17th May 2011 - 5:27 pm

Notice anything about this 5-minute BBC report on House of Lords reform? While it talks of ‘revolution in the air’, every interviewee is a white middle aged man.

Yet House of Lords reform could – if the Coalition chooses to make it so – prove a game-changing opportunity to promote the cause of gender balance at Westminster.

Our Commons party consists of just 12% women and the Commons as a whole barely 22%. The reasons for this are complex and different in each party, but electoral volatility and a leaky pipeline of female candidates are two major factors for the Liberal …

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Tagged all-women shortlists, campaign for gender balance, constitutional reform, equalities, gender balance, house of lords and lords reform | 13 Comments

Hundreds of tales of heartbreak and two numbers

By Mark Pack | Tue 17th May 2011 - 8:53 am

The story of May’s election results is not one that can simply be told with numbers. There are too many tales of personal effort and loss for statistics to do justice to the crushing disappointment suffered by many who had worked hard for so long in hundreds of communities across the country.

Nor do statistics do justice to the brilliant resilience in a precious few places – those with amazing gains such as in the Cotswolds and those largely unsung heroes in areas such as Eastleigh and Three Rivers who have got on with running councils and winning elections year after …

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Also posted in Local government | Tagged community politics | 6 Comments

John Pugh writes: is an apology in order?

By John Pugh | Mon 16th May 2011 - 2:29 pm

There was little real choice about choosing to enter the coalition. There was little real choice about addressing the nation’s colossal budget. There was no way to avoid risking unpopularity.

As the Liberal Democrat councillors took the bullet for the coalition on local election day and Conservatives emerged relatively unscathed, it must be asked whether the extent of our defeats was avoidable. To put it another way could we have played the coalition game better – both in terms of presentation and in terms of policy?

The answer is unequivocally yes and for that reason MPs owe an apology to …

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Tagged coalition, higher education, tuition fees and universities | 60 Comments

Paula Keaveney writes: The Leading of Liverpool

By Paula Keaveney | Mon 16th May 2011 - 1:09 pm

As I write I have just finished my first week as the new Leader of the Liberal Democrats on Liverpool City Council.

And what a week it’s been.

As the first female leader of a major party on the City Council (that’s first ever) I had more than my fair share of attention. I have discovered the joys of the 6 am media call and suddenly being the person everyone wants to talk to.

And the enormity of the challenges ahead has been quickly sinking in.

Here in Liverpool we have a mountain to climb.

Like many …

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Tagged capital of culture, liverpool and liverpool city council | 10 Comments

Forgotten Liberal heroes: Desmond Banks

By Mark Pack | Mon 16th May 2011 - 10:25 am

Listen to Liberal Democrats make speeches and there are frequent references to historical figures, but drawn from a small cast. Just the quartet of John Stuart Mill, William Gladstone, David Lloyd George, David Penhaligon corner almost all of the market, especially since Bob Maclennan stopped making speeches to party conference. Some of the forgotten figures deserve their obscurity but others do not. Charles James Fox’s defence of civil liberties against a dominating government during wartime or Earl Grey’s leading of the party back into power and major constitutional reform are good examples of mostly forgotten figures who could …

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Tagged forgotten liberal heroes, history, jo grimond, lord desmond banks and radical reform group | 3 Comments

Learning the lessons: round-up

By Mark Pack | Sun 15th May 2011 - 9:54 am

During the week, I’ve done a series of posts about our poor election results, which were leavened by only a few bright spots (such as in Bedford).

The series expands on what I told the BBC and if you missed any of the series, here’s the full list:

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Opinion: the end of the vision, pt 1

By Mark Wright | Sat 14th May 2011 - 3:00 pm

When the coalition was formed it was clear there was a meeting of minds between Clegg and Cameron and the two party leaderships. The vision was of a “joint agenda” – a radical and reforming government that would tackle several of the great UK problems: the gargantuan budget deficit, widespread welfare dependency, constitutional reform, NHS restructuring, etc. The mood was “can do”. No issue was too big, or too totemic to tackle.

The 5-year coalition of a centre-left party and a right-wing party would create a government of moderate centre-right, with the centre of gravity over the Ken Clarke/Michael Heseltine territory. …

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8 Comments

The Independent View: Lib Dem green credibility in crisis

By Andy Atkins | Sat 14th May 2011 - 10:58 am

The environmental credibility of the Liberal Democrats is under threat.

Its general election manifesto was easily the most ambitious of all the main parties, with the environment firmly at the heart of every policy area.

So our hopes were high when the party joined forces with Cameron’s Conservatives last year – and higher still when one of the new Prime Minister’s first acts was a promise to lead the greenest Government ever.

Twelve months on the picture looks much bleaker.

Friends of the Earth asked the former chair of the Sustainable Development Commission, Jonathon Porritt, to review the Coalition’s first year in office. His assessment was pretty damning.

Little or no …

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Also posted in The Independent View | Tagged chris huhne, david cameron, environment, jonathon porritt, vince cable and william hague | 24 Comments

Learning the lessons from last week #6: Talking to yourself is not enough

By Mark Pack | Sat 14th May 2011 - 8:57 am

There was a highly symbolic moment late in the Yes campaign when its final TV broadcast was made. The TV broadcast featured Dan Snow and was a remake of an earlier Dan Snow film, shot to higher production standards (understandable) and also, intentionally or not, featuring a cast that overall looked younger. From being a film that featured people of a range of ages it became one that primarily featured young people. That was the general tenor of the campaign – with an overall cast of talking heads (in online films, TV films and elsewhere) younger than the average voter.

Yet in a relatively low turnout (I say “relatively” because, once again, turnout was much higher than many of the auto-pilot electoral doom-mongers in the media predicted) election it’s older people’s votes who are vital.

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Tagged av referendum, dan snow and twitter | 3 Comments

Opinion: why the coalition will never bring us votes

By Jonathan Hunt | Fri 13th May 2011 - 11:45 am

One thing the disastrous election results should do is convince Lib Dems that we cannot rely on the coalition to miraculously bring us victory at the next election. However successful the government may be in its raison d’être of reducing the deficit, little of the credit will accrue to Liberal Democrats.

That’s why the party must begin to devise and develop policies that will demonstrate we really are a truly progressive Liberal Democrat party, and not just “a bunch of bloody second-hand Tories” as one voter suggested on his doorstep last week. We must start to be selfish, and put the …

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27 Comments

Opinion: 5 reasons the AV referendum lost

By James King | Fri 13th May 2011 - 10:30 am

Here is my take on the five main reasons why the UK gave such a comprehensive thumbs down to AV, with one important lesson for the future:

Tuition fees and trust – This is not the place to rehearse all the arguments on tuition fees. But there can be no denying that it was a significant turning point in public perceptions of Nick Clegg. Even though over 300 Tory MPs voted for higher fees, the Conservative-dominated No campaign ruthlessly exploited this as an argument against coalitions in general and Clegg in particular. While I believe the policy itself can be justified, Clegg clearly under-estimated the political cost of a U-turn, particularly in the context ofacritical referendum that needed to be won only a few months later.

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Tagged analysis, av referendum and post mortem | 46 Comments

Learning the lessons from last week #5: You can’t be distinctive with someone else’s vocabulary

By Mark Pack | Fri 13th May 2011 - 8:58 am

A favourite pastime of cynical journalists with space to fill is to take select phrases from the speeches of different party leaders, remove the names of the authors, jumble up the order and then ask the reader to guess which leader said which. Even with the wondrous variety of the English language, it’s no surprise that words and phrases often overlap, even between politicians with radically different views of the world. There is, even so, sometimes a deeper truth in this parlour game for cynics.

It’s a truth that the words of Liberal Democrats in the run up to last Thursday’s …

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Tagged community politics, jonathan calder and mark valladares | 5 Comments

Opinion: Putting the Localism Bill in a Social Liberal context

By Kelly-Marie Blundell | Thu 12th May 2011 - 4:15 pm

In embracing principles of The Big Society and Localism, have the Liberal Democrats being railroaded into an erosion of the public state, seemingly by accident?

The initial premise of the Localism Bill appeals greatly to Liberal Democrat in the Conservative-led Coalition. What is there about bringing power to local communities that is not to be liked?

It could be argued that the principles of the Localism Bill were in fact first proposed within the Coalition Agreement, where Page 11 states;

We will promote the radical devolution of power and greater financial autonomy to local government

…

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Tagged coalition agreement and localism bill | 12 Comments

Opinion: It’s all my fault!

By David Boyle | Thu 12th May 2011 - 1:33 pm

For the past half century, the party has been growing steadily in influence and numbers. There have been electoral set-backs (1970, 1989, and now 2011). The question is: is this our nadir?

And what will decide if this is really the low point, or if we are doomed to carry on sinking in the esteem of the public?

Most commentators have talked this question in terms of short term issues, like how the party manages to play the coalition. But actually there is something far more fundamental that requires attention.

It is whether we can …

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Tagged federal policy committee | 46 Comments

Opinion: surveying the wreckage

By David Hennigan | Thu 12th May 2011 - 9:44 am

As a political organiser, I’ve seen the highs and now the lows that come with the territory. In Rochdale in 2005 and Manchester Withington in 2010 – the results made all the effort and long hours worth it.

In Manchester last week, I presided over losing every single seat. Yes, every single one!

It wasn’t through lack of effort. Take for example Simon Ashley, the former group leader. Simon has delivered close to 200,000 leaflets since May, good quality leaflets focusing on crucial issues like the closure of his local swimming baths (where his 2000 plus …

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Tagged alison firth, john commons, manchester and simon ashley | 25 Comments

Do Lib Dem members think the Coalition will collapse early? And what the public thinks about Nick Clegg…

By Stephen Tall | Thu 12th May 2011 - 9:08 am

Channel 4 News has conducted an interesting YouGov poll surveying former and current Lib Dem members about their views on the Coalition. Their political editor Gary Gibbon gives the skinny on his blog:

We have a YouGov poll, taken from 396 Lib Dem members and 118 former members, on the programme tonight. It found that 52% of (396) members sampled thought the coalition wouldn’t run the full five years, though 63% thought it should. The poll suggests 35% think Nick Clegg shouldn’t lead the party into the next election (against 45% saying he should) – worth remembering he only won

…

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Also posted in Polls | Tagged channel 4 news, david cameron, ed miliband, gary gibbon and nick clegg | 14 Comments

Learning the lessons from last week #4: The party’s local government base matters

By Mark Pack | Thu 12th May 2011 - 7:21 am

Broadly speaking, the party’s local government base is now back to where it was in 1993. As I put it:

For those who joined the Liberal Democrats in the last 18 months, and may not yet even have been in school in 1993, that may well seem a long time away and a big step back; for those who have seen the party’s ups and downs in the ’70s, ’80s, ’90s and ’00s, 1993 looks rather better – and nothing like as bad as the dog days of having a party leader on trial for conspiracy to murder (late 1970s) or

…

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Also posted in Local government | Tagged ann shaw, community politics, keith house, sara bedford, simon hughes and tim farron | 3 Comments

The Independent View: What now for any progressive alliance?

By Neal Lawson | Wed 11th May 2011 - 2:47 pm

Rounding off our trio of post-election views from the other parties (see here and here), we have Compass’s Neal Lawson.

So what now for any progressive alliance? Let’s start with an honest assessment of the hole we are in. Labour is now as divided between pluralist and tribalists as it is between those who think the markets needs come before those of society and those who turned social democracy on it head under New Labour. Labour did OK in the North but badly in the South, it did OK in Wales and atrociously in Scotland. The Greens have …

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Also posted in The Independent View | Tagged av referendum, chris huhne, compass, ed miliband, social liberal forum and vince cable | 20 Comments

In Defence of Politicians: Peter Riddell’s new book

By Mark Pack | Wed 11th May 2011 - 1:24 pm

For decades Peter Riddell has been one of the best British political commentators, regularly providing his readers with insight rather than, as is the way with second-rate commentators, simply leaving the reader little more enlightened at the end of a piece that knowing that, yes, that commentator’s own political views are the same as they were last time.

So his book, In Defence of Politicians Inspite of Themselves, has many years of experience and analysis behind it. It originated in a lecture he gave on the same theme in February 2010 and reads like an extended version of the lecture. …

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Also posted in Books | Tagged peter riddell | Leave a comment

Opinion: Hackney debates NHS

By Prateek Buch | Wed 11th May 2011 - 12:38 pm

You would expect that the electoral disaster faced by the Lib Dems last Thursday, with hundreds of councillors losing their seats and the referendum on fairer Votes comprehensively lost, would have overshadowed the weekend’s political activity. Not so in Hackney, where the local party and friends gathered in the sunshine to discuss the apposite question, “what is happening to our NHS?” First to address the issues around the government’s proposed reforms was health Minister Paul Burstow, and in fairness he did begin by paying tribute to the hard-working activists who had to deal with …

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Tagged NHS and paul burstow | Leave a comment

Opinion: a reboot worked for Star Trek. It can work for the Lib Dems too

By Lee Dargue | Wed 11th May 2011 - 11:24 am

The BBC handed out more negative adjectives, including “collapsed”, “destroyed” and “drubbing”, to our losses (ignoring the gains and holds) on May 5th than Simon Cowell does on the X-Factor, so really we can leave other people to castigate the party and Nick Clegg, and we should get on with being honest about what happened and being focused on where to go next.

Whilst I’m going to present this piece in a positive manner, it in no way diminishes my understanding of how badly we were flushed on May 5th, just I feel there is no point wallowing in it continuously. …

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Tagged star trek | 13 Comments

Learning the lessons from last week #3: Grassroots campaigns don’t win national elections

By Mark Pack | Wed 11th May 2011 - 7:53 am

Liberal Democrats have long known that grassroots campaigns can win a ward, a council or a constituency – but they don’t win national election campaigns. It’s the knowledge that you need both the grassroots campaign and an effective national media and/or advertising campaign that explains why when Chris Rennard was the party’s Chief Executive not only did the Campaigns Department grow hugely in size – but so too did the national press team.

Yet at the heart of the Yes campaign in last week’s AV referendum seems to have been a big mistake: trying to run a grassroots campaign to win …

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Tagged av referendum, barack obama, chris rennard, daily mail, david cameron, ed miliband and paul waugh | 41 Comments

David Laws: questions for him, questions for political journalists

By Mark Pack | Tue 10th May 2011 - 11:21 pm

The advanced leaking of a supposedly highly confidential Parliamentary report is just the sort of tip that political journalists love and we all often enjoy reading or hearing about.

But there are leaks and there are leaks, as the widespread leaking of the Parliamentary Commissioner’s report into David Laws demonstrates with the three questions it raises.

First, it’s not news that the Parliamentary Commission has found David Laws broke rules – he himself previously said he had and reported himself to the Parliamentary Commissioner. What will be new news, when it comes out, is what the Commissioner has found as a result of …

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Tagged david laws and journalism | 34 Comments

Opinion: A Scottish candidate’s view

By Keith Legg | Tue 10th May 2011 - 1:54 pm

Days have now passed since the last result for the Scottish Parliament was declared. At least that provided a bit of happy news; my local colleague and former Dunfermline MP Willie Rennie was elected as the last MSP from the Mid Scotland and Fife regional list. But frankly, what went on in the 18 hours prior to that was not much short of a horror show – I never thought that “Losing Deposits” would ring true again.

Normally, after a drubbing like that, attention turns to the campaign itself and where it all went wrong. This time, though, there’s no real …

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Also posted in Scotland | Tagged avalanche of abuse, jo grimond, mountain, orkney, shetland and tavish scott | 23 Comments

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